Dennis Norman
By: Dennis Norman
This morning the U.S. Department of Commerce released a report showing the sale of New Homes here in the Midwest region in August were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 49,000 units, a 5.8 percent decrease from July’s revised annual rate of 52,000 units (originally reported as 61,000 in July) and is down 31.9 percent from a year ago.
The U.S. as a whole saw a slight 0.7 percent increase in new home sales in August over the month before and is down 3.4 percent from a year ago.
The report does not break down new home median sale price data by region, but for the US the median price of new homes sold in August was $195,200 down 7 percent from July’s price of $210,100. The average time on market for new homes sold in the US in August was 12.9 months up from 12.4 months in June and up 30 percent from a year ago when the median time on market was 9 months.
The Midwest had at the end of July an estimated 46,000 new homes for sale which works out to an 11.3 month supply of new homes at the current rate, so slightly better than the overall numbers for the U.S.
I’ll close with the same comment as last month: The inventory of new homes, as well as existing homes, needs to continue to decline in order to help restore the real estate market back to a healthy balance of suply and demand. Or, if I look at it with the “glass is half full” approach, sales need to increase to bring the supply down.
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